Tales of the Wind Country
by cc iconoclastic
Summary: From the moment of my birth, I am loved and cherished like all the other beloved children of his Imperial Majesty Asahito Kikuyama of the Wind Country... Arranged marriage, GaaraOC.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Naruto clearly does not belong to me. I write fanfiction only for personal enjoyment and would not make monetary profit from it even if I tried, and that would be illegal anyway.

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**Tales of the Wind Country**

By cc iconoclastic

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Precious Child

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From the moment of my birth, I am loved and cherished like all the other beloved children of his Imperial Majesty Asahito Kikuyama, the supreme lord of the Wind Country. I am told by veritable army of maids and wet nurses and tutors surrounding us that he loves me well, and that he always has. He himself named me, they say, an honor not conferred on all of his children by his wives first through fifth. As soon as he was able after hearing the news, he rushed to her side even as she drew her last breath not an hour after I drew my first. It was at that moment he named me Tsuyu after the spring rains of her homeland in the north of his realm. In a country as arid and dry as our own, I am often teased that my name is proof of how I have always been treasured by all the people around me.

Yet all the daimyo's considerable power and wealth is never able to win him or buy him the opportunity to marry my mother, and this is why I cannot be his daughter anywhere outside the heavily guarded walls of the Inner Palace. I am raised there, in the sanctum which allows his legal wives and his children to remain protected from the outside world until duty that is theirs by right compels them to leave. I am therefore only Tsuyu, a child without a claim to membership in any clan or house, with no legal right to anything outside of my given name.

For most of my early life this does not matter in the least. I scream with laughter and skin my knees as I careen about on the verandas and in the gardens playing childish games with the true-born princes and princesses of the Wind Country. I am dressed in the same richly embroidered silks, attended to by the same nurses and serving-girls, and I have my knuckles rapped by the same tutors for not paying attention to the same lessons as they are. I learn to read the classics and to write poetry. I learn to dance as elegantly as any of the other princesses though like many of them I prefer to play games with the other children and would rather not have so much of my time absorbed by lessons.

In many ways, there is no child in the Inner Palace as universally loved as I am. Whenever any of the Imperial Majesty's five regal and elegant wives would return from the important business they conduct throughout the realm, they would always send for me along with their own children and shower me with the same small gifts and sweets and stories as we all listen wide-eyed to stories about magnificent cities and endless desert sands. These are all foreign concepts to us, as we know little of the world outside the verdant and still courtyards and gardens of the Inner Palace. I can never be a threat to any of their daughters, could never snatch away an uniquely suitable arranged match with some powerful lord's son however much my father favors me so all of them have always treated me with nothing but the greatest kindness.

If and when any of them hear from the maids that one of their children have called me a "bastard" or in any other way referred to me as anything less than they are in the heat of childish anger, they never fail to scold the offender thoroughly. Throughout my childhood, very little of suck talk ever makes it to my ears as a result, and it remains easy for me to dismiss as unimportant.

Eventually though, as the years passed, the difference between the children who are my sisters and brothers in the Inner Palace and I grows more vast and obvious. Around the age of eight or nine, the children of House Kikuyama are presented to the Outer Court and to the world with a coming of age ceremony of sorts before they are, without fail, fostered out to another great House in my father's realm. They are sent to the most powerful, the most wealthy, and the most loyal of the noble families. This is so they can learn how to be the bravest and wisest of princes or the most cultured and dignified of princesses from the most powerful noble lords and ladies throughout the land, far away from the idyllic shelter provided by the Inner Court.

When they are fostered away for these four to five years at a time, they also begin to form their own connections amongst the children of the other great Houses, and so they establish the ways they too will one day be great and powerful. My brothers learn what it is to govern and what it is to fight alongside other youths of their station, becoming comrades and brothers to the lords that will one day be loyal to them. My sisters learn what it is to run a household and what it is to mingle with great men, one of whom they will eventually marry.

My lot at that age is to remain in the Inner Palace. It would cause considerable offense for his Imperial Majesty to request that any noble lady take me into her care. A great many Wind Country daimyos of the past have fathered many base-born children of their own, but none of them have cared to take the responsibility of caring for them. I wonder sometimes whether my father's decision to provide for my childhood and education as if I truly were his own was a curse or a blessing. My childhood was blissful and happy, but by the time I am ten I am lonely as the last of the playmates I grew up with leaves for a far-away court, dressed in clothes that are very grown-up and adorned with the Kikuyama crest. I begin to feel the truth of the way I am, in some ways, alone in the world.

After that point life only becomes increasingly more complicated, as the age and height difference between myself and the other children of the Inner Court continues to grow. I begin to grow out of the lessons that the tutors can provide given their primary duties and obligations to the much younger children. Most are fond of me, as I have been among their more obedient and brighter students, and do what they can in spare moments to continue to advance my studies. Yet, their first priority must always be to the younger children, and so I am increasingly left to pursue my studies with no outside direction or assistance. I read voraciously, and they bring me books that would be educational or of interest, but otherwise I feel that I am an outsider, with no place in the sheltered world I grew up in.

It is now early in my fourteenth year, and I have just met briefly with his Imperial Majesty, who assures me yet again that if he can find any sort of place for me in another court, he will send me there. He mentions the possibility that some nobleman's wife might agree to take me as a lady in waiting though my being fostered out remains as ever, completely out of the question. I ask yet again if I could be permitted to go to school in the city with the children of merchants and others who are well off though they are not of the noble houses. He tells me yet again, not unkindly, that such a thing would simply not be permitted, it is not done when I retain some connection, however tenuous, to the royal House.

As I leave, I hear the sound of tiny feet running towards me and a weight suddenly crashes into my knees, though it is so small that it does not even really shake me. Small arms wrap around my legs and I look down to see which of the young princes or princesses it is.

"Hinako-chan, why are you crying?" I ask, kneeling down so that I may be at eye level with her.

Princess Hinako is the third daughter and sixth child of his Imperial Majesty's fifth wife. She is six now and it will not be long before she is fostered out. Among the children currently in residence in the Inner Court, she is one of my favorites. If I remember correctly she is supposed to be in music lessons right now with the other girls around her age.

"Narumi-sensei hit me." She wails. "I've been trying so hard, but I still can't play the song right."

Such are the concerns of my young half-brothers and half-sisters, concerns that I once shared though they have been replaced by worries that are far more distant and amorphous. I am very fond of them, but it has been a very long time since I have grown out of the sort of life they lead. Still, I cannot help but feel for her, and have in the distant past been the target of much scolding and many smacks on the hands by exacting, demanding tutors.

I smile at her as reassuringly as I can. "But Hinako-chan, if you practice more, won't you soon master this new song like you have all the others?" I ask.

She looks at me and there are still tear tracks running of her face, though she is wiping them away on her sleeves. She nods solemnly. "But why does Narumi-sensei have to yell at me so much?"

"It is only because she wants to help you learn." I tell her as I take her by the hand, "Now you still have another half hour of your lesson to go, am I right? I will walk back with you."

After we arrive, I watch the lesson for a time through the half-open screen door. Satisfied that Hinako is no longer upset as she purses her lips in concentration and continues the lesson, I eventually leave to wander around the gardens on my own, with only my own thoughts for company. I think back to the conversation with his Imperial Majesty. Though I am told that he presents himself to the outside world as a fierce and ruthless man, that is not the side of him I or any of my half-brothers and half-sisters know. He has always been very kind to me, though he does not often have the time to play the role of a father. I do see, however, that he is stern and unyielding when he has made a decision, and he continues to refuse me the chance to leave the Inner Palace on my own terms, even if would not cost him much.

Would it be so bad, I wonder, to give me a false name and send me to a boarding school in one of the cities with others my own age? I am not picky when it comes to which one. I would not have to bother anyone, and I could eventually graduate and have a way of making my own place in the world. I love my family dearly, but I know as well as they do that I will never really belong in the world of the great Houses, bound as they are to ancient traditions that prohibit me from joining that world as one of their own.

I have been told, however, that the world outside the inner and outer palace walls is vastly different. There, your house name can continue to be important, but it is possible to make one's own way without the backing of a clan or a house. It is a world that is completely foreign to me, but I feel that it is better than the alternative of always waiting for a place in this one, which is likely to never come my way. Perhaps I am being foolish and naïve to think that I will be able to forge my own way and support myself independent of the extended family that has always surrounded me, but I wish only to be given the chance to try.

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Author's Notes: This is a completely experimental piece that I'm working on whenever I need a slight break from my main fanfiction in the Gundam Seed fandom. It will be Gaara/OC and arranged marriage to boot, and I'm mainly trying to give myself practice writing in a very different voice from my own. I'm probably playing fairly fast and loose with canon, but when it comes to Naruto fandom I find that doing that is quite fun. I've always had a weakness for writing about court intrigue, arranged marriages, and so on, and I'm also playing around with that in this fic. To be honest, I'm not yet sure what direction I'm going to take this in.

Any reviews of any sort would be very welcome, and like any writer I'll admit it gives me a slight incentive to write faster.


	2. Chapter 2

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Dearest Brother

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Without a doubt, my favorite amongst all my half-brothers and half-sisters is Prince Tsutomu, the second son of his Imperial Majesty's third wife, the Lady Takayoshi. Though he is four years my senior, so our childhoods in the Inner Court did not overlap much at all, he was by pure chance fostered in the household of a great lord whose province was very near the capital. Throughout his five years as a ward of Lord Kukouji, Tsutomu was able to visit often.

Roguishly handsome and possessed of as much quick wit and cunning as a fox spirit, Tsutomu is also amongst my father's favorites though he is unlikely to ever ascend the throne since he has six half-brothers and counting ahead of him and one older brother of his own besides. To me, he has expressed his private intention to never marry, and he tells me he wants to be an ambassador, forever free to travel the wide world and take in all the sights and pleasures it has to offer. Now in his eighteenth year, Tsutomu has already taken great strides towards his ambitions. He writes to me often to tell me of his many travels, describing in great detail the many exotic sights he has seen. Through his words, I learn of the great cities I might never be able to see, the expansive desert and deep canyons that lie in the center of the Wind Country, and the many negotiations and other games of power he has been a participant to.

I come to understand that he will likely be very good at that kind of work. At an age where most of my half-brothers continue to remain apprentices to older, more powerful men in practice if not in name, Tsutomu has already played his own role in negotiating agreements with those men. Though they are cunning and deft in different ways and have had much more practice in the games of politics, Tsutomu is learning quickly. He tells me that his relative youth and inexperience might even be a sort of advantage, and many an older man has assumed he was merely a foolish and empty-headed young prince with no wisdom of his own. All the stories he writes to me make me smile as I remember the parts of childhood we shared. Even when he was very young, his best weapons were always his words.

Today, I sit in seclusion on one of the verandas facing the garden while all of my half-siblings currently in residence are likely in class or taking a brief afternoon nap. Lady Takayoshi and three of his Imperial Majesty's other wives are also here, though as I have gotten older I speak to them far less for lack of much to say. I am reading a book that Tsutomu sent me as a birthday gift with his last letter, commenting that it was a work our old history tutor Hayashi-Sensei would disapprove of and that its publication had been a great scandal to Departments of History at every University in the realm. That of course, he wrote, made it all the more interesting.

The page count of this work is staggering, and it seems to cover almost the entire history of the Wind Country in some detail. I had been reading voraciously for nearly a week, and today I had reached the lengthy chapter devoted to the present day. Here, I began to understand how this particular book could have caused so much scandal. The author described the rule of House Kikuyama and the ways of the Hundred Great Houses as "an anachronism imposed by force, namely through the way their deep coffers allow them to bid on the services of the shinobi villages in both the Wind and Fire countries."

To add to the obvious insult, the ways of his Imperial Majesty's court were similarly criticized for being antiquated and irrelevant. Certainly, theirs was a world in which I had precious little place of my own, and I could not exactly describe it as mine. However, all the people I had ever known and loved belonged to it, and really it was all that I had ever known.

Feeling slightly scandalized, I flipped to the information on the author's academic credentials again. Of course, he resided outside the Wind Country, his work would likely have cost him a charge of treason otherwise.

Mentioning the role the shinobi played or continue to play in any of our land's political struggles and wars was a thing simply not done in polite company. There is no doubt – even in my relatively sheltered mind – that the mysterious mercenary warriors exist. To suggest that any of the great lords loyal to House Kikuyama or that our emperors themselves would do a thing so dishonorable as to hired them though… That was simply not done. Still, a more sensible and logical part of me knew that it was probably true.

Tsutomu and I both know personally that it is true. When he would return to the capital and visit the Inner Palace in the next week, he would finally tell me of the work that he was doing when he sent his last letter – a mission to the interior of the Wind Country, to the Hidden Sand – negotiating with those mysterious shinobi themselves, no less. At the moment though, I merely reflect on how we know that less proud aspect of House Kikuyama's history to be true. I smile, actually, as I remember it, though I did not find it quite so amusing at the time. It was one of our earliest adventures together.

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I was six and Tsutomu was ten, an old hand at finding new and glorious ways of breaking the rules and flouting attempts to impose discipline upon him. He was to be in residence at the Inner Palace for a week while Lord Kukouji was occupied by important business and had no time to watch his young wards. By the third day, he had already wreaked as much havoc within the Inner Palace as he could plan, and he was already finding himself quite bored.

When he asked me to join him in sneaking out of the confines of the Inner Palace, I was as thrilled as a six year old could be at the fact that a much worldlier and beloved older sibling had thought me more worthy of joining in his games than any of the other older children still residing in the Inner Court. We snuck around the verandas until we reached the kitchens and then we slipped through one of the servants' gates, smiling widely to each other and stifling giggles all the way.

We do not have much of a goal beyond the fact that we had wanted to sneak away, thus breaking one of the cardinal rules imposed on us in the Inner Court. The elation that comes from having done so with such great success keeps the whole adventure entertaining, however, and we continue to make our way around, often ducking behind the decorative pillars and folding screens to stay out of sight.

Long before we have the opportunity to grow bored, our excursion is cut prematurely short. As we back away from one hallway, grinning to each other and convinced of our own genius, I bump right into someone who grabs me hard by the shoulder and turns me around so he could see the face of the careless child who was foolish enough to run into him.

I look up and want to scream, though I am so scared that no sound comes out when I open my mouth. The tall and hulking stranger seems almost a monster to my young eyes. He is dressed in strange clothes, rugged and worn down by the harsh climate of our land, a jumpsuit and a thick vest. His head is wrapped in an off-white hood, and half of his face is completely covered while the other half is adorned by stripes of red paint. All in all, the image he presents is like nothing else I had ever seen. I am completely paralyzed by fear while the stranger gives me a cursory glance up and down, with a strange and indecipherable but very stern expression on his face. As with most of the new servants or tutors at my first meeting with them, when his eyes reach my hair, its color means that it warrants a second glance.

Long ago, the armies led by the great Houses came from afar to the Wind Country to impose their rule. Descended in an unbroken line from those families, as my half-brothers and half-sisters are, they have the look of foreigners. Every one of them was born with very dark, near-black hair and very dark eyes set against very pale skin. My mother, however, was originally from the Wind Country proper, and so she must have had the look of someone from the interior because she had passed that look onto me. I along among the children was born with pale and decidedly light brown hair. The stranger seemed to find that odd for any child that would be wandering the halls of the palace, clearly dressed in clothes of a quality reserved for a prince or a princess.

With the appearance of more dignity and authority than he could legitimately claim due to his age, Tsutomu had demanded imperiously that the stranger unhand me. When the man had turned to him, clearly amused, he maintained his grip on my shoulder, and I was unable to slip away. Seeing that his words had done no good, Tsutomu had rashly decided on the next best thing. He'd kicked the man hard in the shin even as servants emerged to see what all the commotion was. The man had been surprised enough to let me go though he had no other reaction to Tsutomu's very rash gesture.

We were scolded very severely for our juvenile prank, though in the end, once we were safely back in the familiar refuge of the Inner Palace both of us thought it a thoroughly amusing game. Later on, whenever I heard passing mentions of the shinobi in history lessons or in history and story books, I would think back to that time and remember the man dressed in strange clothes. I would know for a fact that they are real.

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Author's Notes: I've pulled in some clearer elements of Naruto-verse now. I'm not sure how I feel about this chapter. I rewrote it several times trying to bring in the details I wanted to get out, and I didn't really like anything I came up all that much. I rather want to move on though, so I did the best I could and now I'm posting it. I'm still very much in the learning stage when it comes to writing fiction, so if anyone sees any really glaring errors definitely just let me know, and I'll fix it immediately. I hope to really bring in canon characters with the next chapter/piece of the story though I don't think I'll try writing them from the first-person perspective and use the third-person instead. It's probably not a good thing to jump from one type of perspective to the other, but I can't imagine doing a good job of writing from the POV of the Sand characters.

Thanks to everyone for reading!

Replies:

Sarimia: Thanks so much!

Darkwitchling: Thanks for reading and reviewing! Naruto has always been a fandom I'm very fond of though I also really like Gundam Seed.

NeferNeferi: Thanks for taking the time to read and review. Sorry for not getting to your PM earlier, but yes Gaara will be kazekage and I will take some of the details from post-timeskip canon (he won't have the Shukaku anymore, for example).

IxLovexMyxFishy: Thanks so much for reading and taking the time to review!

Miss Writer: Thanks for reading! I do plan on this being some time post-timeskip and so Gaara will be kazekage and will already have lost the Shukaku (which is about as far as I was able to get in the manga post-timeskip).


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